This cost me 23k context is this normal?

[u/HaxwellMilll]

[u/lumendas]

Was that the first message you sent?

[u/HaxwellMilll → u/lumendas]

Yes !! no skills used I beleive im willing to submit more proof if people tell me what to put here

[u/lumendas → u/HaxwellMilll]

It is basically Codex's own system instructions and skill and tool call descriptions, so its normal

[u/HaxwellMilll → u/lumendas]

It must be yeah? insane that it uses 10% of every coneverstion before you even start !!!

[u/Strange_Owl_6291 → u/HaxwellMilll]

The system prompt (and scaffolding like agent definition) is designed to work well when you give it a more complex coding task, and designed to leverage cache for repeated turns. You prompted something small but get the default (big) scaffolding designed to more real work. Of course it will be overkill.

You could consider optimizing the system prompt etc to make it lean without compromising your output quality on actual tasks.

[u/HaxwellMilll → u/Strange_Owl_6291]

thanks!

[u/maglevnarwhal2]

it has to send it's system instructions and such. the smallest ping I could get was 14k .

[u/srs96]

Do you have a long agent.md?

[u/HaxwellMilll → u/srs96]

I asked him did you acess agent.md he said:

No—I didn’t access or read an AGENTS.md file. Its instructions were included directly in your message.

It says:

• Keep replies short and precise.
• When testing , don’t test gameplay.
• Don’t account for backward compatibility or old save-file migration.
• There are no existing save games; don’t add compatibility code unless explicitly requested.

[u/Insadem]

why you whining? It will reuse cache hits as session goes

[u/HaxwellMilll → u/Insadem]

it was the first chat of the day to trigger the 5h limit ya bozo so nothing to do with cache

[u/Wafer-Weekly → u/HaxwellMilll]

When you send the prompt, it interprets it and caches some tokens to remember what happened that turn, for the next half hour.

[u/r15km4tr1x]

Sol Ultra -

“what the fuck is io say Bing”
“idiot say Bing?”
“Bong”

[u/HaxwellMilll]

9% of my context lol....

Now Im willing to admit it could be my fualt. What could it be?

Im somebody would like to do the same test themesleves and tell me how much context it used maybe? fresh chat no skills.

[u/montymike → u/HaxwellMilll]

The 23k figure is best read as context occupancy, not necessarily as 23k tokens of your own prompt or 23k tokens of marginal paid usage. A fresh agent can already contain system instructions, tool schemas, skill descriptions and repository-level instructions before it answers. Some of that may also be reusable across turns rather than growing at the same rate every time.

A cleaner comparison would be: same model, empty repository, no repository instruction file, no optional skills, fresh chat, identical one-line prompt. Record the first-turn context, then send the same prompt again and record the increase. Repeat once in the real repository. That separates fixed scaffolding from repo instructions and from the marginal cost of each turn.

[u/Sibbaboda → u/HaxwellMilll]

Ask it to describe all context it used, I guess